A fire aboard a cargo vessel under repair at a Qingdao shipyard killed 20 people, with five missing in Thursday's named files. [1] Reuters filed major casualties through state media. [1] The New York Times filed the same blaze. [2] Print 20 and five missing. Do not spend a later settled 25 that belongs to a later edition.

A yard fire is not a closed port and not a Hormuz sentence. Cause remains under investigation. Xi Jinping ordering a probe is a political sentence, not a finding. Print the fire. Print unconfirmed as a cause.

Print 20. Print five missing. Leave a named final toll to the edition that owns a named final toll.
Thursday is not a vanished Qingdao.

Yard fires with probes ordered from the top follow a script: investigate, report, reform. The script rarely finishes on schedule. Twenty dead demands more than procedure.

Twenty dead plus five missing is Thursday's toll with an asterisk. Asterisks resolve into names or numbers. The manifest decides which.

Manifests decide asterisks; Thursday's yard is 20 dead and five missing. Not a vanished Qingdao. Not Friday's 25.

Thursday's yard is 20 dead and five missing. Not a vanished Qingdao. Not Friday's 25.

Twenty dead and five missing is Thursday's yard tally. Friday's 25 is another edition. The shipyard fire is not a vanished city.

Thursday's shipyard tally is 20 dead and five missing. Do not spend Friday's 25. The yard is not a vanished city.

Thursday prints 20 dead and five missing, not Friday's 25. Do not spend Friday's 25. The yard is not a vanished city.

-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing